Alma says "Please fear me again".
+ Decent weapon selection.
+ Casual players might appreciate the game's less-than-scary atomesphere.
- The level design is awkward and disorienting.
- Tons of shooting sequences are either too easy or frustrating as hell.
- I've written comedy scripts and novels with more serious dialouge.
- Sergeant Bucket, although speechless, still gives the impression that he's a douche.
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I. INTRODUCTION
"I told you that I paid too much."
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Sometimes, playing a game is not all fun and games. And when it comes to sequels, its too easy to get shot by a bullet. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is one of those unrare, raw slabs of uncooked meat. The breifing of this review is simple; I wanted to love this game but instead the plot is hard to follow, the gameplay is fair, the level design is really silly, and the voice acting is beyond bad. Most of us waited a long time for F.E.A.R. 2 and I would like to say that I don't think it was generally worth the wait. It has alot of little things that add up overtime and make you mad, and the acheivements tend to be the only replay value of the forgettable singleplayer and dead multiplayer. If you simply buy F.E.A.R. 2 because you're too afraid to buy the original game, you should just forget it and buy the original game along with an extra pair of clean clothing. F.E.A.R. 2 can and will disapoint the rest of us.
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II. Story
"You have been ordered to stay with Sergeant ****et."
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In F.E.A.R. 2, the quiet but strangely likeable Pointman is no longer playable. Instead, Sergent Micheal Becket is the potagonist of this game, who also doesn't talk but somehow presents him as a douche of a potagonist; probably because of the ugly grin that he always has on his face. The story takes place in the Mid 21rst century where a supernatural ghost known as Alma has unleashed some sort of crysis that is nearing to devour the entire world and spew out all sorts of horrific monsters. You are a part of a squad that is going to deal with the problem.
That's cool and all but you don't even learn any of this by actually playing the game. While I don't personally need nor like huge story opreas for games, I wish the developers would have made a game where you can just pick up and play and understand the whole thing without having to resort to internet sources. But I have to say the plotline is jambled up by random scares and red herrings that will leave newcomers wondering what all the fuss is about with the series whereas fans of the original game will be a bit boggled.
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III. Gameplay
"So...why exactly are we trying to confront a supernatural being whom we cannot kill?"
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The first thing I should say about F.E.A.R. 2's singleplayer is that it is very linear. Enemy placement and mission objectives is kind of predictable, for one thing. The enemies are limited with the bosses usually being generic meches that you need to bring down, but the weapon selection for the game is good enough. The ability to lean behind corners to check for danger is removed and replaced with the ability to flip over tables and objects for cover. This could've worked well if the game put up a challange in these areas, but it doesn't. And Becket doesn't crouch very low to use such cover effectively, so it is probably better to just take cover behind a wall. By the way, rooms are indestructable unlike the original, which also aborts the imersion that F.E.A.R. had.
Wolfenstien 3D has more believeable level design than this game. The level design is just completely random. I think that walking through a secluded suburban school and after a few checkpoints later somehow walking into a office building complete with elevators and children's pictures is completely absurd. There is also no possible way that Becket can be knocked off of his rails; the player always finds a proper route devoid of any proper deversions and it feels like the only things that slow you down are walls and static objects or structures. Rarely you will be actively searching for the next place to go up or down or around; instead you will feel like you are walking through corridors with strange sharp turns. There are rarely any moments where you are prematurely blocked off from your next goal, and the game tends to give you far too much room to shoot your foes, backpedal, and reload throughout the entire thing.
Unlike most video game potagonists, Becket actually has an excuse for being good at killing his foes; his Reaction Time. With a touch of a button, you can slow down time where the movement of your enemies and the force of the world is slowed down. Your movements are slowed down too, however, your aiming sensitivity is not. So this means that Reaction Time is a way you can change the rolled dice of a firefight and easily pick off your foes, matrix-style. You can also see bullets fly through the air and explosions erupt abnormally in slow time, so this can result in some unique enemy encounters.
Strangely for a F.E.A.R. game, the A.I. in this one is pretty darn stupid. The original F.E.A.R. had you up against many soldiers who would outflank you if you were hiding in one spot for too long. Here you will also face many soldiers in the game, and some are bigger than others. However, they are hardly educated in the arts of warfare; many of them will just stand out in the open while they let you shoot them down. In many occasions, some soldiers will simply start running back and forth in the same positions only to slip on your thrown grenade and blow up. Who knows, maybe they will just throw there own grenade into a wall and kill themselves. The game also features a handful of insane explosive soldiers. These sucicidal maniacs are equipped with rocket launchers and will simply blast away at you even if you are in the same room and standing right next to their face. The game would have been better to name these frustrating enemies "instant-killers"
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V. Presentation, (Graphics, Sound, etc.)
"There's nothing to fear but the fact that a sniper rifle can cut somebody's torso clean off."
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F.E.A.R. 2 is technically unstable for the most part. Some areas of the game are so easy you can just walk into a room full of bad guys and litterally stand still while you turn your head around to shoot each one. In other areas, the game gets considerably tougher to the point of being constantly frustrating, and the only reason for that is because the checkpoint system feels like checkpoints are rarely placed. Other problems included litterally not being able to progress in the game at all. Some levels required me to turn a valve off by standing next to it and pressing the Action button. It turns out that the Action button wasn't responding, so I had to commit suicide and reload a previous save for it to work. As a freelance level designer, I know that the player should NEVER have to commit suicide to move on and if they do, then there is seriously wrong with the level itself. F.E.A.R. 2 brings this to the forefront and the weak programming alone adds a lot of "horror" to the Single Player portion of the game.
There's nothing wrong with the graphics. They look alright and serve the game well. Gun sounds are very weak, however, and I don't remember the music score of the game. The game features an untoggable film grain effects which looks okay and can get the casual player amped up for a short amount of time. The level design is also very cliche and predictable. The atomesphere in the game isn't something worth pissing yourself over; the game is only scary because you know something is going to pop out at you randomly when you enter a room, which greatly adds to the frustration. Stepping in a certain part of a room will usually trigger something like your flashlight losing battery life or strange red flashing lights on the screen, but these tactics wear out quickly and start to become constant. When something scary actually DOES pop out at you, the screen is so white and blurred out that you often can't even tell what is going on. The special effects and creepy noises let players know that something bad is obviously happening but you can't see the details when you get the perspective of a person who has been sprayed in the eye with a watergun.
The voice acting for F.E.A.R. 2 is so bad that it is comparable to Rouge Warrior. Yes, it is that abysmal. Without owning the full version of the original game, I am unsure if the voice acting was this bad before but it is horrible now and that is all that matters. The game itself decends into satrical comedy with obscene audiologs that you can pick up during the Singleplayer that are loaded with pitiful vulgarities. They're not funny, they're just childish. There is way too much slang and "dude speak" in the dialouge and the characters of the game rattle off gratious swearing in almost every setence. The constant attempts at drunk-person humor competely defeat the slightest drop of horror in the game, and even if the game was trying to be funny, it's still bland. No wonder why Alma is crying. If I was imprisoned by such freaks, I'd go sane.
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IV. Conclusion
"Don't show me that crazy naked ghost person when I'm eating ramen noodles again."
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I would seriously not reccomend buying this game for any price above what it is worth on the Xbox Live marketplace: estimated $20.00. That opinion is further rebutted by the multiplayer component for the game. It has removed the slow-motion featured that was in the original and, unsurprisingly, is pretty much dead for that reason. If you can get this game at a bargain bin, you should closely observe what you are being charged for. Paying a cent more than this game is worth will truly make you want to join her in a rampage to take over reality.